Is recruiting tech blowing your budget? 5 reasons why consolidation is your cost savings power move.

Consolidation as a cost-saving power move

“My team and budget were cut significantly, and inbound is out of control, but TA still needs to deliver.” This statement exemplifies the struggle that many TA professionals are facing today. It’s a classic case of being asked to do “more with less.”

So what do you do if you find yourself in this situation? If you’re looking for a way to work within a constrained budget while still maintaining an efficient pipeline of talent, consolidation (in other words, slimming down your tech stack to the essentials) can be a winning tactic. Let’s explore why in more detail. 

Cost savings through consolidation

When it comes to TA technology, there’s generally been a tension between choosing an all-in-one-solution that does everything (though not necessarily well) and best in class point solutions that excel in one area (but need to be stacked and integrated in order to support the full suite of TA team activities). But as costs continue to rise, it’s worth taking another look at every tool you’re using and seeing if there are places to consolidate.

For example, you might be able to improve your candidate experience and employee efficiencies: Gem’s Pipeline Analytics helps you eliminate unproductive sourcing channels to better spend your money, while automations free up employee capacity for more personal tasks. Meanwhile, the variety of personalizations, workflows, and outreach options give candidates a customized, personalized experience where they feel valued from their first interaction with your company. See more on this topic here. 

“With Gem, we eliminated the email-finding tool we’d been paying for and streamlined two tools into one.” – Shannon Zwicker, Manager, Recruiting Operations @ Cockroach Labs

Stronger internal relationships

Tools don’t just add up in terms of the amount of money you’re spending on seats and licenses. Every tool involves people from other departments, like the CFO who needs to approve the budget, the legal team who reviews and revises contracts, and the IT team who’s responsible for overseeing security, integrations, and any other technical issues that arise. 

When it comes to your CFO specifically, you may find that as a talent acquisition leader, you exist in a unique relationship with your finance organization. That’s because recruiting tends to fly under CFOs’ radars: In most businesses, recruiting is still viewed as a cost center rather than intrinsic to revenue. As such, your CFO may spend very little time quantitatively considering recruiting KPIs, comparing industry hiring benchmarks, or scrutinizing the ROI of your TA team’s software. 

This has real implications for recruiting spend—especially now that cost-savings is top-of-mind and CFOs are asking rigorous questions about “must-haves” versus “nice-to-haves.” Is that recruiting CRM you’re asking for a vitamin or a painkiller? If you can’t prove the business case for talent tools, your team will be under-resourced in perpetuity.

Remember that finance leaders’ job is to grow the value of the company, not just slash expenses. Common sense tells them that a do-more-with-less solution with a 240% ROI is well worth it—regardless of whether that software was originally in their budget.

CFOs think in terms of data and dollars. Tying your proposed CRM solution to cost-savings (lower cost-per-hire, tool consolidation, more ARR per employee) is how you’ll move the mountain with them. Not to mention the fact that having fewer tools can also help you get on the good side of any other stakeholders like legal or IT teams since you’re ultimately streamlining their workflow. 

76% of customers say Gem has helped position Talent Acquisition as a strategic partner to the business. 

Rethinking investments 

If you’re thinking consolidation might be the way to go, the first step is to take stock of where you are today. Which tools are you using? Can you quantify the ROI in terms of money or time saved? If you don’t have the hard numbers, start with rough estimates. If that’s still not possible, at least take a look at usage. How many team members are using the tool in question? Does it overlap with any other tool that’s already in your stack? Once you start getting data, you can begin to identify and eliminate redundant tools. 

For example, you may be able to save 30% or more with one platform for CRM, sourcing, scheduling, analytics, and potentially ATS. And reducing your reliance on costly social networks and agencies for sourcing can save you tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you’re curious to see what this looks like in practice, learn how Veho saved $50,000 by streamlining their outreach and how Prestige Care saved $125,000 on agency fees while hiring 8 director-level roles in a single year—all made possible with Gem.

“Gem has paid for itself well over 9x—a more-than 1000% ROI, just in the roles that I recruit for as a working manager.” – Blake Theiss, Director of Talent Acquisition, Prestige Care

Strategic tool selection

When it comes to consolidation, eliminating unnecessary or ineffective tools is one piece of the puzzle. But it’s just as important to make sure you’re strategic when selecting the tools you do use. You’re looking for multifunctional platforms and a slimmed down tech stack that’s still versatile enough to meet your specific needs.

Software is one of the big buckets CFOs must constantly consider when it comes to overall company spend. What’s the urgency of spending on this tool specifically, compared to other solutions? One of the most obvious reasons to invest in a new piece of software is if it can replace multiple existing—and collectively more expensive—pieces of software, allowing you to cut down your tech stack and reduce the total number of tools the team is using. 

Gem’s sourcing solution has allowed teams to reduce spend on everything from email-finding tools to additional candidate sourcing tools like Fetcher. Gem’s Talent Compass—which offers full-funnel visibility, hiring forecasts, performance metrics, and executive reporting that TA teams use to plan ahead and guide their recruiting strategy—has helped our customers cut spend on everything from kanban boards like TalentWall to analytics solutions like Ashby (Gem’s Talent Pipeline and Talent Compass replace them both in a single, source-of-truth solution). Read more about the financial benefits of consolidating with Gem here.

“Immediately we saw that Gem could replace a lot of the products we were using. It was easily one of the better products I’d seen in terms of streamlining manual work: searching for phone numbers, emails, social media sites. And the cherry on top was that it integrated seamlessly into our ATS.” – Joe Gillespie, Recruiting, OpenAI (formerly Head of Tech Recruiting at Robinhood)

Explore how Gem can help you consolidate your own TA tech stack by requesting a demo or connecting with our sales team!